


Wakeful

by thehobblefootalchemist



Series: Like Calligraphy on Scrap Paper [4]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: F/M, Gen, Idiots in Love, Jazz has been a regular at his library for so long, Mutual Pining, Not seeing the forest for the trees, So it's been, That don't know the other is too, Watching Someone Sleep, that they've both forgotten how momentous it was that he let her in in the first place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 12:28:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12864537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehobblefootalchemist/pseuds/thehobblefootalchemist
Summary: It might have been just another quiet night in the library, save for one thing.Or; all relationships hit tipping points sooner or later, and after ten years Jazz and Writer's finally begins to teeter toward something new to them both.





	Wakeful

Jazz was at an emotional impasse.

The Ghostwriter’s library lair was empty save for the two of them, its owner seated next to her on the couch and—as of five minutes ago—very much asleep. They’d been having a pleasant evening simply reading together, but he’d told her he had pulled an all-nighter working on a book the night before and it looked as if it had caught up with him. Ghosts didn’t have many of the same needs that humans did, but rest of the mind was something every consciousness required.

But oh did it put Jazz in an awkward position. All it had taken had been one glance, just one look at the slumbering man on her left for it to abruptly hit her over the head that she’d quite like to curl up with him and drift off as well. _With him_ being the key phrase.

She really, really wanted to pretend she didn’t know where the desire came from, but the fact was that she was long past denying that she was void of that particular type of interest when it came to him.

_Oh, honey,_ the small little voice that was her conscience piped up in the back of her head, _forget ‘interest’. You’re downright infatuated._

Jazz watched the rise and fall of his breathing, looked at how he kept a secure grip on his book even whilst unconscious, noted how his glasses had slid forward down his nose when his head had fallen to the side against his shoulder. “I know,” she whispered.

And, him being a ghost or not, after almost a decade of knowing him she was beginning to (and very much, in fact) want to do something about it.

Her only obstacle was how Writer would feel about the situation. In an ideal world she could just talk to him about it, but there was a not insignificant part of her that was scared of how he’d react if she did. He could be hard to read, sometimes—what she’d been picking up merely as shyness may well have been colored by her own growing attachment, and could have been genuine romantic indifference all along.

But then, too, the notion that he’d be alright with it was vaguely frightening in its own way. Uncharted territory was still uncharted territory, even if it was somewhere you liked to fantasize about ending up someday.

She kept looking at him, quite torn, until her mind started coming up with all kinds of rationalizations about how she could reasonably pass getting closer to him off as a fluke of her own drowsiness. Just once couldn’t hurt…and after all, if he moved, then she would have her answer, right?

It took her ten careful seconds, but Jazz was true to her impulse. Drawing her knees up she situated herself against his side, tucking her head to his collarbone and shutting her eyes. It was a snug position and therefore cold, due to Writer’s ectoplasm-based form, yet she rather thought it was the most comfortable she’d felt in a long while. It seemed in fact so natural that it wasn’t something she felt like she could get used to—it felt in a way like she already was.

Contemplation of that thought was what eventually carried her into her own sleep.

. . .

An odd sensation of pressure woke the Ghostwriter. It wasn’t a bad feeling, so he didn’t get up all at once, not even opening his eyes until a full minute of him had passed of berating himself for falling asleep in front of company. That action—of opening his eyes again—was what made him realize the feeling of pressure against his right side _was_ his company.

He’d have said what he did next was freeze, but in point of fact Writer realized that he was far warmer than was usual. That was Jazz’s influence—her body temperature had been like a space heater, the proximity canceling out his natural state of cold. His body did certainly lock up, however, just as much as his mind seemed to jam in place.

What was he supposed to do with this? How did one react when one’s friend of nearly a decade’s time was cuddled up against you? Because that was the only verb he could think of that accurately depicted Jazz’s position: there was little to no space between them where she had moved to during his sleep.

Most confusingly of all, one of his first responses was that he felt…bizarrely okay with it. It wasn’t a discomfiting situation, regardless of the fact that it _should bloody well the hell have been a discomfiting situation_. This was _Jasmine_ , a human, his _friend_ , sleeping literally right against him, like she was—like they were—

And it felt fine.

Which meant that oh was it not fine, there were a thousand and one reasons (he had painstakingly and pain _fully_ compiled them all) why this scenario was an inadvisable one. Daydreams and late-night wishfulness meant nothing, he couldn’t want something along these lines, there was some kind of Rule of the Universe that was going to end up taking it away—

Jazz mumbled something in her sleep, gripping onto the face of his coat, and Writer made momentous effort to relax in both the physical and mental sense. It wouldn’t do to have her return to consciousness now; something akin to an anxiety attack was not anything he wished to project to her, especially when it was nonsensically attached to something she’d done that he was _enjoying_.

But even if this time it was indirectly the fuel of his anxieties, her presence was nonetheless its usual comfort to him. When he became caught up in watching her as she dreamed, he could actually feel the tension draining from his form. It was simply an impossible thing not to respond to the utter sense of peace she looked to have. He felt again that sense of ‘fine’-ness, like this were the most normal thing in the world for the pair of them to have found themselves encouraging. Slowly, Writer closed his eyes.

_…oh, fuck it,_ he thought, and allowed his cheek to press against the top of Jazz’s head. If she was unhappy with how they were when she got up, he would gladly pass responsibility for it onto their shared tiredness and be done with it; they’d never need to speak of it again. Right now, though…

_Just this once._


End file.
